4 Lessons From A Company That Dramatically Lowered Its Recruiting Costs

Mike Roberts July 13, 2015

We’re so submerged in awesome technology, shock value from innovations that transform the world seems like it’s becoming more diluted by the day. But figures like a 99.8% reduction in cost-per-applicant are still enough to stop us in our tracks. By embedding job alerts into various sections of their career sites, a growing number of today’s companies have forever changed the way they approach talent acquisition.

Although job alerts aren’t new, the technology behind them has gotten far better in recent years. At the same time, the career site is emerging as the number one source of applicants for many companies, and with that influx of online traffic, adding the option to opt-into job alerts packs a much harder punch than before. From both client discussions and data, a few important lessons can be gleaned from adopting the solution.

In this post, we’ll focus on one company in particular—one of the world’s largest consumer electronics retail chains—which deployed job alerts not long ago. It was able to reduce its cost-per-applicant from $30 to just $.05 (a 99.8% decrease). Four very interesting takeaways from its experiences so far are shared below.

1. Application Completions Aren’t the Only Career Site Conversions that Matter Anymore

Technology and analytics have enabled us to easily track key recruiting performance indicators like career site traffic, applications started, applications completed, and so on. To that effect, candidate conversion metrics like application completion rates have become very important for recruiting organizations. But the use of job alerts mitigates the impact of job seekers bouncing from the site or abandoning applications during their visit.

The consumer electronics retail enterprise provided job seekers with the ability to opt-in to hear about relevant job listings that may come available in the future. And as more people signed up, automated, personalized notifications started going out and people were applying to jobs 30, 60, even 90 days out. As that started happening more, it didn’t take long for job alert signups to become one of its most important career site conversion metrics to monitor.

Job boards have done wonders for recruiting organizations. But, as mentioned above, the career site is quickly gaining ground as the most important applicant source for many companies. As that trend continues, those with job alerts embedded throughout their site are positioned to reap a growing list of benefits—one of which being that they no longer need to pay-per-click on job boards.

Because job alerts started becoming both the number one driver of career site traffic and candidates, the large consumer electronics retailer was able to virtually eliminate its paid job board spend. Job boards were simply no longer needed, as a flood of applicants would come in every time a notification went out about new listings. This was an added return on the investment that was already outperforming expectations.

3. If Given the Opportunity People Will Opt-In to Hear About Future Relevant Positions

There are a few main reasons why people come to career sites. The most passive ones may just be interested in learning about the company and its culture. Others might want to see which types of positions are available. And then many will have full intentions on applying. Job alerts enable each of these personas to become part of your talent pipeline to some degree.

Over the course of 2014, the consumer electronics retail company had more than five million job seekers organically sign up for job alerts. During that time, the talent pipeline grew at an exponential rate, simply because there was an option to opt-in. Many of these sign-ups came from job seekers that entered the site but either found no applicable or available positions at the time.

4. Recruiters Will Spend Less Time Identifying Candidates and More Time Engaging Them

Constantly reacting to hiring needs is a difficult way to operate. It adds a lot of stress to recruiters’ lives. Although proactively building talent pipeline is something many experts recommend, the reality is a very high number of talent acquisition teams are stuck in this reactive state. Why? Because it can be very difficult to get ahead, especially in a large, growing company where positions always need to be filled.

Becoming more proactive was one of the main objectives of the consumer electronics retail company—especially because the industry is impacted by seasonal demand. While in the past, its recruiters had to really pick up steam to prepare each location for the holidays, the deployment of job alerts completely changed that. The company’s five-million-strong database of people who wanted to know when relevant jobs were available made it the easiest holiday season ever.